Original subtitles

In the spring of 1940,

Britain faced a military disaster.

Trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk,

the British Expeditionary Force

faced an impossible situation,

as Hitler's army closed in.

- We went through hell, because the bleeding

and the men being blown to pieces

and the machine gunners shootin' them down

by the hundreds.

It was absolutely dreadful.

- These Stukers was fitted with sirens

and they screamed as they came down

to frighten you, and they did.

- We were dive bombed all day long.

Dead bodies and you just prayed

you were in the right queue.

- One of my friends got hit in the head by shrapnel.

Both of his eyes were blown clean out of his head.

He died almost instantly, which was a good thing.

- They came diving down on us, the soldiers.

Said what the devil are you doin' here, missus?

They piggy backed me along the beach.

- It looked as though, potentially,

for Britain the war was over before it had even begun.

The core of the British Army

was on the brink of being eliminated.

There seemed no escape.

We was on the beach for 48 hours,

no food, no water, nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.

You just hoped that they would miss you.

Operation Dynamo was the climactic moment

of one of the greatest escapes of all time.

Hundreds of British ship crews,

many in private boats, crossed the Channel,

bravely plunging into the thick of battle.

- The water was up to my chest.

Over came the Luftwaffe so we were like sitting ducks

in the water.

- My overcoat was permanently wet

from the waist down.

- I could hardly swim but it's surprising,

when you've got to you do it.

This is after our ship got blown,

this bomb went right down the funnel

and it blew to smithereens and there was dead

and dying boys all over in the water

and the captain said, we cannot stop, gentlemen,

we cannot stop.

And then suddenly we got into the Channel

and there was relief, relief, relief.

We got to Dover and then we kissed the ground

and cried our eyes out.

In celebration of the courage

of the soldiers and those who saved them,

this is the story of an epic escape

that must never be forgotten, told by those

who were actually there.

- I have been to hell.

I think I dream of it every night, every day,

of the days when I went through so much to live

and now 99.4, he's still here.

- Every morning, wake up, and there it is.

It's amazing I'm still alive.

- I can dream every night about it.

- I'm the only known living survivor

of my battalion.

I mean, I was only one of a million wasn't I?

- They're so forgetful today.

I talk to some people, they said what war was that?

That's the attitude of today.

- I mean I go to the schools, the kids

have never heard of Dunkirk.

Nor have the teachers.

- Dunkirk is so important in a global,

military, political sense that it's amazing

to me that people don't remember it.

Certainly until the film came along

people had no idea at all what Dunkirk was.

And even those who knew thought about it as,

you know that little British bit

that happened before America got involved

and saved the day.

It's a hell of a lot more important than that.

It's a universal story of survival.

It was a miracle in the sense

that so many troops got home when,

on the face of it, it didn't seem likely

that very many would at all.

The fact that the British got home

meant that Britain didn't have to make

a peace treaty with Hitler.

Britain didn't have to surrender.

If the troops had been destroyed,

the was would have been over

and the consequences would still be with us today.

- There is no glory in war.

It is just survival.

- I was born in 1918, a pretty poor family.

My mother wasn't a lovey lady

and they couldn't control me

so they said he will go to Doc Bradada's Home.

So I went when I was five 'til I was eight

and then from there I went to Norwood Children's Homes

for two years and I went to Soukup Homes

and that was my early years.

And believe you me, you can't understand life

in those days, it was pretty, pretty rough, pretty rough.

- I joined the Territorial Army at the age of 18.

Well I joined it because cheap beer in the canteen

and the girls like men in uniform.

I didn't really join it to become a solider.

- We joined Territorial Army at Brixton.

I was in front of the infantry.

My job as an anti-tank gunner was to shoot the tanks.

- I was cycling along with my friend

and women would come, recruiting sergeants,

doctors, and said would you like to join the army?

We said yes.

He said, how old are you?

And I told him 16.

Oh, he says, you're not old enough.

I said hang on a minute, no I'm 17.

So he signed me on.

Kid that age, they think it's marvelous,

the uniform.

- We tried again and again to prevent this war

but now we are at war and we are going to make war

and persevere in making war until the other side

have had enough of it.

- I was born in Belgium, Antwerp,

then the war came, of course we had to get out.

The Germans smashed our house to bits

and, of course, we had to leave everything behind.

I was only nine.

- War was declared September 3, 1939.

In the end of September, I was called up,

so I was in pretty quick.

I was conscripted.

- I saw a war was comin' and my father advised me

to get out of the army and join the air force.

We had a medical for air crew.

I was wearing glasses, I failed the medical,

and saved my life because the majority of my class

didn't live out the war, so havin' glasses saved my life.

- You looked upon it as an adventure at first.

We never realized what it was gonna be.

- Well nobody could really, really know

like what would happen.

World War II was the most savage

and destructive global conflict in history.

In the wake of the German invasion of Poland,

in September 1939, the British Expeditionary Force

were dispatched to Europe.

The very beginning of the war in 1939,

you had the British Expeditionary Force

traveling out to France.

These were young men who'd never

been abroad before so it was an incredible experience

for these people.

They were going out on the boats across

and then train traveling across France

just clamoring to get to the windows

to see what a foreign country was like.

Not much was happening and they ended up

meeting French people, eating French food,

doing all sorts of things that they'd never done before.

And being away from home, it was kind

of an adventure for these young people.

Britain is slow to anger

and certainly never wanted this war.

But since it's been forced upon her,

she's fully determined to see it through,

no matter what sacrifices are demanded.

And those who are making the biggest sacrifice,

the fighting men, are the most cheerful.

- We sailed across on Christmas Day,

landed in Cherbourg in France on Boxing Day,

so that was our Christmas.

- We went to a place called Gandicore

up near the Belgian border and I was in

a machine gun battalion, lot different

than bein' at home with your mum, ya know?

- As I was able to drive, I was put

into the Royal Army Service Corps which is all transport.

That winter of 1939 was a very severe winter,

deep snow, we were so short of supplies

and that was the trouble.

You were sleeping in hidey-offs

and you were given one blanket between two

and it was freezing.

In fact my pal and I got up one night

and had a jog in the snow, we run as fast

as we could to try and get warm,

we were that frozen.

Soldiers were issued

with food rations, designed to meet

their nutritional requirements.

- You're given a tin of bully beef,

like a corned beef, a packet of biscuits,

like dough biscuits, and that was your meals for the day.

These army biscuits, you couldn't bite 'em,

you had to break 'em with something

and make 'em soft and swallow 'em

so I said yes, I'll have another one

and I nearly broke my teeth bitin' it.

- They were so hard.

They say the biscuits have got a lot

of energy in it so I'll take their word for that.

- Sometimes the cook gave us what he called stew

but best not to ask what was in it.

The BEF that went to Europe in 1939

was a totally mechanized army.

But with scandalously inadequate training,

they were ill-equipped to fight

a superior German Army.

A lot of the troops weren't trained

because they weren't really soldiers.

- Virtually all of them it was the first time

they'd seen action.

It's amazing fact, a lot of these people

had never fired a gun.

Literally never fired a gun.

- By the time we went to France

we just about knew which end of the machine gun

the bullet came out of.

I mean all we did was march about.

You're given a bit of basic drill,

given a rifle, little bit of target practice,

and the I was allocated a lorry

and that lorry you kept all the time.

- Well James seems to be having

a pretty exciting time at sea.

There's no doubt he's doing his bit, all right.

Here we are at home, nice and comfortable,

sitting 'round the fireside, do you know

it makes me feel I'm not pullin' my weight in this war.

By May 1940, things looked bleak in Europe.

As Hitler's army unleashed devastating attacks

on France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

In May, the action really began.

The Germans moved forward and so did

the British Expeditionary Force

move forward to meet them

at a pre-arranged point in Belgium.

They hadn't been allowed into Belgium up to this point.

The idea was Belgium was staying neutral

and would only get involved if it was attacked,

so once the Germans moved into Belgium,

so the British Expeditionary Force

and the French moved forward from their lines

in France forward into Belgium to meet them.

- First place we went to was Brussels

and the street we were in was empty,

it had been completely evacuated,

the civilians had just gone.

- We got on a train in Antwerp

and it wouldn't move so we got off

and we walked from Belgium to France.

We walked all that way.

- It was a beautiful day, lovely, sunny sky,

little white clouds, and we was in this French village,

and I walked across the square

and out of a white cloud came this German fighter,

swooped down and machine gunning me.

But he was a rotten shot, he missed me.

When Germany started the Blitzkrieg,

the 10th of May, that's when we first

met up with the Germans.

- We went all the way along the River Dyle

and the Germans were on the other side

firing at our guns and we were firing at their guns

so we had a Lysander up there sending the information

to me and I informed the army

so eventually got their targeting shot there

aircraft down.

- What was expected really was a stand-off

like the first world war, a war of attrition,

a war of very little movement,

people thought they would be ending up

in their own trenches facing the German in their trenches.

Because that's what they were used to.

But that's not what happened.

Because the Germans mounted this incredibly audacious attack

through the Ardennes, using their Panzer tanks

and it just cut through the defenses.

People didn't think they could get

through a forested area to attack

but the fact was they did.

And there were virtually no defenses behind

so they drove straight through

and in a matter of days, they had reached the coast.

- We found ourselves at a town called Wyvern.

These Stukers would circle up

and then pick their target and the lead in one

used to be divin' down, well we discovered

that if you fired, those who were circling

could see the flashes of guns

and they would probably bomb you,

so in the end we used to wait until the last one

was in his dive, they used to come almost vertically,

and he couldn't alter it, and that's the one

we used to shoot at.

Shot one down, anyway, that was quite satisfactory.

- I heard that the Germans are four miles away

and I suddenly saw a roadblock,

soldiers coming through, it was the Guard's Brigade,

I said what are you buggers doing?

He said, we've been told to retire to the hill.

I said well I've just left there

and he said well, you better hang about,

see what's goin' on.

So my officer, he went and found out

that we've got to move too.

So from there we went to Ariste, Amiens

and fought the Germans down there.

The Allied armies were hampered

by poor communications.

With no common leader, they often operated

solely with their own objectives in mind.

- We didn't know where we were going

or what we were doing.

- The lack of communication between the British

and the French in the build-up to Dunkirk,

neither side really knew what the other was doing.

- When Sergeant Grover said hurry,

you put on that spot there with your gun

and if any tanks come in to you

with their guns pointing forward, they're enemy,

if the guns are reversed, they are friendly.

So I said, okay Sarge.

So I sat there with my gun and I said

there's tanks coming, Sarge.

He said well shoot the bastards then.

I said well I can't see 'em.

Oh, right, get on.

So I carried on and suddenly they started firing at us.

Guns were blowin' us to pieces.

I thought, this is terrible, this is terrible.

And then suddenly my gun was hit

and we were knocked out for a couple of minutes.

And suddenly we're so sorry,

we thought you were the Germans.

These are bloody Frenchmen in this tank.

As big as a house but we got about 17 causalities then.

- The lesson that was learned was that communication

with their allies would have to be far, far better

in the future and not only that,

their communication amongst themselves

would have to be better.

The Allied defenders were unable

to match the sheer might and ferocity

of the German Blitzkrieg attack.

Faced with superior air power

and a more unified command,

they were a poor match for the German Wehrmacht.

The German Army was better equipped.

It was most certainly better trained and more experienced.

All their armaments were better than ours.

Their machine guns were better.

Their anti-tank guns were better.

Their tanks were better.

Always one step ahead of what we got.

They always had bigger tanks

that could fire farther distances.

They just stood out of range of ours

and just knocked 'em out.

- We had rifles but they weren't good.

- My weapon was a Webley 38.

When it was time to fire them

it was time to get out of it

'cause you couldn't hit a barn door

at ten feet with them.

The defenses of Paris are airtight.

Enemy planes will find a barrier

of steel guarding the throbbing heart of France.

The bitter lesson of 1914 has resulted

in the famous Maginot Line.

For mile after mile along France's eastern

and northeastern frontier are lines

of steel and concrete gun turrets,

connected underground by vast subterranean chambers.

Here, entire armies can be quartered

in comfortable and air conditioned surroundings.

They shall not pass is the historic war cry

of the French solider and the scissor-like crossfire

of the Maginot Line makes doubly sure

that the new world war will not be fought in France.

The Allies could do little

to stem the advance of the enemy.

In the town of Wormhout, 17 miles from Dunkirk,

British troops were overrun by advancing German forces.

- I saw the best and the worst of war.

I had some wonderful friends

and my colleagues were so brave.

There was 100 soldiers put in a barn as prisoners.

So the Nazis came through one evening

and they machine-gunned and shot

every soldier in there.

And these men were murdered but fortunately,

Pulli and Callahan were still alive

under their bodies of their mates.

And they stayed there with all their dead

and dying and those dear ladies, farmers' wives,

put them in the grave.

- I'll tell ya one thing, not all Germans were bad.

Although we was trying to kill each other.

And I don't suppose a lot of them wanted

to be where they were any more than we did.

- The funny thing is that I liked the German people.

They're a lovely lot of people.

It was just these Nazi troops.

I saw plenty of Germans do, you might say,

acts of mercy to wounded soldiers.

They would always attend them according

to severity to their wound.

Regardless of what uniform, whether it was gray

or whether it was khaki.

And we used to do the same.

You know the ordinary German person

doesn't want a fight.

- I always used to say to my men,

if you take any prisoners, treat them

as you would wish to be treated

if the situation was reversed.

I mean, after all, they were human beings.

As Hitler's forces moved

through France at lightning speed,

the Allies found themselves fighting

against overwhelming odds.

- You had to be dissident.

I didn't see any cowards.

- Well I only had one, he was a driver,

I'm not gonna tell you what his name was,

but he was a proper ladies' man

of curly hair with a little mustache

and his sidecap on the side of his hat.

And he was a boaster.

We couldn't find this fella.

He went missin' and I found him lyin'

in our split trench.

I said, where have you been?

He said I got lost.

And I said, how'd you get lost?

Walkin' up in broad daylight behind someone else?

But anyway, that was it, so I used

to give him the least responsible job

which I thought wasn't quite fair,

ya know, the least dangerous job.

I know he had a wife and daughter.

I said what would your family think

when you're branded a coward?

He said to me, I don't care what you say

or do to me, I'm not drivin' this carrier up that road.

Well the only thing you could do

was to stop their pay, not that we got much anyway.

And I wouldn'tve mind if he wasn't such a boaster

when he was out, oh we did this, we did that.

I said, you did nothing except crap your pants.

I don't know whether you call that trauma or what.

It would be several years

after the events at Dunkirk that military psychiatry

became an essential element of medical provision.

- Those soldiers that come back from the front,

I know exactly how they feel.

I used to have a lot of flashbacks

but I never had any treatment or anything.

We never bothered about counselin'.

You had to get on with it.

- I didn't need counseling.

Might I say, the men of those days

were a lot different than the men today.

- Counseling?

Kick up the backside.

Bloody counseling, that's a load of rubbish.

There wasn't anyone to give 'em counseling.

Well, not officially.

Outnumbered, outgunned

and outmaneuvered, the Allied defenders

fought a desperate retreat

as the Nazi war machine closed in.

The Blitzkrieg operations for the Germans

have effectively encircled the British Army

in northern France.

- The speed meant that they almost got

to the point of cutting off any exit.

- The effect of these tanks streaking through

and reaching the coast meant that

the British Expeditionary Force was effectively outflanked.

It meant that even before the fighting

had begun in any real sense, they already

were on the back foot and they were going

to have to retreat.

- The British, from purely pragmatic view,

saw that the battle was lost, they knew

it was gonna end badly.

And they thought the only way

we can stay in the war is to get our men away.

Then we can carry on the fight.

- We knew things were boiling up.

- And the Germans had circled us around.

It happened so quickly.

The only way out was by water.

- And by that time, the word was Dunkirk.

That was the only escape for the British soldier.

- Along this road, came this German staff car.

Patrol shot the driver and the officer

in the back jumped out and ran away.

But he left behind in the car his helmet,

his belt with his Luger, and a briefcase.

That was immediately taken to the divisional headquarters

and I realized this briefcase contained the plans

for the German corps that was to attack Dunkirk.

- There were two days grace which allowed

the French citizens to get of Dunkirk itself

'cause it had been bombed heavily

and the French soldiers to barricade it

so that they could defend it.

The situation was rapidly becoming desperate.

German tanks had reached the Channel Coast.

The Maginot Line had been outflanked.

With the French and Belgian armies

retreating on each side, there was only one option

for the BEF.

Withdrawal to Dunkirk.

- I was driving along this very twisty road

and there was a bridge that had been hit

and rather completely blocked, you couldn't get through.

So I was stopped and while I was lookin' at a map,

I suddenly saw someone comin' up

with a revolver in his hand.

So I grabbed my rifle ready to shoot

and then realized it was a British officer.

He said where are you making for?

And I said that little village.

He said well good job for you but the bridge is down

because the Germans are in charge of that village.

And he said in case you don't know,

you're encircled, so make for the beach.

So I drove back to where my company was but they'd gone.

- Montgomery was able to shift my division

to fill out the gap where the German Panzers

were gonna come through.

And so we got to the Commes Canal

where we took up position just in time

before the Germans arrived the other side.

We were there for about five days holdin' 'em back

while the rest were gettin' away from Dunkirk.

On the last night, the Germans got around us,

so it was decided someone had to go back

to our headquarters and tell 'em what was happening.

So I volunteered.

So I ran up to this farm and on guard outside

was a friend of mine and he shot me from a few feet.

But it wasn't serious, it went

through my shoulder, right shoulder.

He thought I was a German.

And he said, I'm sorry, I aimed for your head.

Well he was only a few feet from me

and I said it's a bloody good job

you're a rotten shot then, isn't it John?

Defeated and humiliated,

the Allies were backed into a corner.

Surrender seemed inevitable.

The war for Europe was assumed to be won.

- This incredible defeat, because that's what it was,

it was a huge defeat, looked as though

it would wipe out the British Army.

If the army was outflanked already,

all the Germans had to do was to curve round

and it would be completely surrounded.

And if it was completely surrounded,

how on earth could it possibly

do anything but surrender?

- We heard from the general that they could not help us.

I knew we'd lost the war.

- And you thought well they're going

to invade Britain now and that's it.

- I didn't know how we could possibly win at that stage.

We'd lost everything.

The whole British Army, all its equipment.

Amid the unfolding chaos,

the BEF headed for Dunkirk.

- As the British Army moved back

it became fairly clear to Lord Gort,

he was the commander-in-chief of the British Army,

that if Britain was going to survive

in the war, there would have to be

some kind of evacuation and it became very clear

that evacuation could only take place through Dunkirk.

Because bit by bit all the other ports

came into German hands.

The only one that was still in Allied hands was Dunkirk.

Now the British soldiers, they didn't know

why they were retreating.

They were sent into the retreat,

thinking maybe my unit's done something wrong

and we're being punished and we're being sent back.

They didn't realize for a long time

that they had been completely outflanked themselves.

And so back they came.

- We got through and I said, aw come on kid, jump up.

I've got a lovely big horse that I'm puttin' on board,

I said we're gonna have a ride to Dunkirk on this.

We start the ride I said, no, we can't do that,

that poor horse is gonna get killed.

Come on, off ya get, let's go back.

Then we walked, walked, and that was it.

- We handed over to French troops,

to hold the Germans back while we got away

so we drove to the outskirts of La Plagne

and we were told there was someone there

that would meet us and tell us where to go.

Of course we got there was no one there.

So we walked into the sea, I remember the water

was about up to my chest.

Over came the Luftwaffe machine gunners along the beach.

There were no ships, no boats at all there.

So they took us out the water

and decided that each machine gun crew

would find their own way.

- We came across a farm and the farmer came out

and said are you stayin', and we said

well we're moving slowly and he said,

well here's the key of my house,

he said look after it as long as you can

because I'm going and leaving everything behind.

And then the signal came through, evacuate,

so we evacuated and that was the end of that.

- We were three weeks on the road.

We were in the farmyard with all the animals.

We could help ourselves.

Went into the nest boxes but we couldn't drink the water,

we couldn't drink nothing, we couldn't

have nothing to drink.

- Hadn't got any food, no water, nothing.

And I said, oh Ebbie, what we gonna do?

He said, Henry, there's an old bullet there,

he said we're gonna shoot him up.

He's goin' I could hear him moanin', poor old thing.

So we shot him and we cut some joints

of beef off him and we had steak that thick, my God.

- We did eventually meet the soldiers.

We were the Chesire regiment.

They were very good, they fed us,

we had a lot of biscuits, hard crust things.

Horrible

With the enemy on their heels,

the retreating army continued to the coast.

- We were told that if you find our forces shot,

just go in and help yourself

because the Germans will have everything.

So I went in there and I got some cigarettes

and my co-driver who had never driven the lorry

he got some whiskey.

He was a Scotchman.

He was in the back of the lorry, drunk

and that was the last I saw of 'im

until I got to the beach.

As thousands of defenseless civilians

fled for their lives, the soldiers witnessed scenes

of countless horrors.

♪ Oh my God are we doin' this again ♪

♪ Are we really doin' this again, oh my God ♪

♪ I just can't believe we really can be doin' this again ♪

♪ Will we never learn

♪ Will we never, ever learn

♪ Will we ever learn

- There were so many refugees on the road

and they just wanted to get out of the way,

so this really hampered the British retreat

because they were retreating alongside

hundred of thousands, millions, of civilians

who were also trying to get away.

So it's chaos, ya know the roads are chaos,

the whole atmosphere is one of chaos.

What is going to happen?

Nobody knew.

- We had to keep going but the French did suffer.

Oh we saw some terrible things there, terrible.

'Cause the dead bodies on the side, it was terrible.

- The terrible sights we used to see

of hundreds of people being murdered

and bombed and burnt up.

All these refugees with prams

and horses and carts and, of course,

the Luftwaffe, they were machine gunnin'

to cause chaos and block the roads.

- They'd just bomb anything.

They didn't care.

- We went through so much death, rotten bodies,

men, soldiers, horses, cattle, everything.

It was absolutely dreadful.

- We saw an officer laid out.

He was dead, lyin' on.

Oh, I said, and all his little photographs

were hanging out of his children, everything.

Despite the horrors,

the soldiers had no choice but to keep moving.

- People crying help me, help me.

It was a fiasco, absolutely a fiasco.

When I saw those poor lads being blown to pieces,

and you just ignore it, you just ignore it.

You know it's happened and it's gone.

It's really terrible to see these women

and children being injured and that

but not much we could do about it like.

- We couldn't save anybody.

When you're going through all of that.

You despair and you did your best

but you know you had a job to do.

- There was a little boy came home from school

and he found his house had been bombed

and his mother and father were killed

and he said, where' my mummy?

Then he followed the soldiers with us.

- Oh my feet were terrible.

The soldiers kept puttin' me on their backs

because I couldn't walk anymore.

I was only a little kid.

Oh it was awful.

Well my father gave up, he didn't want to,

he said I'm not going any further.

He said the Bosch can have me.

Deep in a complex of tunnels

beneath Dover Castle, the British began

to formulate Operation Dynamo.

The person with the overall control

of the evacuation was Admiral Bertram Ramsey,

who was a trusted old naval hand

and who was put in an extraordinarily difficult situation.

He was working from Dover Castle,

in fact, working from the Dynamo room.

- And the message came through here

that Operation Dynamo was to commence.

- Things had to be done so quickly.

You hadn't got weeks to plan what to do,

it had to be done immediately.

The recovery was no

ordinary military operation.

Admiral Ramsey devised an evacuation

involving over 900 vessels.

The port of Dunkirk

had been almost completely destroyed by the Luftwaffe.

It was almost unusable.

So all you had was the beaches.

The trouble was,

the ships were too large to come in

close to the beaches.

The beaches were very, very shallow.

It was a flat, vast, duney beach.

Which is great if you want to sunbathe

but if you're trying to get large destroyers

up to it and get men off the beach,

it's impossible and that is what they found.

- What was needed were smaller boats

that could actually ferry the soldiers

from the beaches to the larger naval

and civilian ships offshore.

The British government appealed

for small civilian craft to join the rescue mission.

The operation would become the biggest evacuation

in military history.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

- It came out by radio to begin with

and that was it, that's all people knew.

- It wasn't until very late on

in the evacuation that the newspapers

and the radio even reported that there was an evacuation.

It was kept secret.

- It was all done in such a rush,

the requirement to requisition the vessels

sort of came overnight.

It was organized chaos and everybody

who could lend a hand, lent a hand.

A lot of the time the owners had no idea

that their boats were being taken.

- If the owner happened to be nearby,

then they could join in with the project,

if not, the navy basically went along and just took them.

Arriving at the outskirts of Dunkirk,

many of the exhausted soldiers had not eaten for days.

- I drove 48 hours, kept falling asleep

at the wheel, hittin' the curb, waking up,

and eventually arrived at the beach.

- I went into a cafe and asked if we could have some water

in our bottles because we had had no drink

and the lady said I'm sorry, we've got no water

in Dunkirk, the Germans have blown up the waterworks.

She said but I will fill it with Van Rogue for me.

So we had Van Rogue for the beach.

- I said, look at that warehouse over there,

look, it's empty, there's nobody there.

I said give me your rifle.

So I got his rifle and I bang, bang, bang,

about five shots with it, opened the door,

and when I opened up this door,

you would never believe this, it was full

of neat Jamaica rum, loads of Carnation milk,

biscuits, everything you wanted.

It's gonna be left for the Germans.

Dunkirk was a military disaster.

The loss of equipment to the British Army was colossal.

As soon as they got to Dunkirk,

the soldiers were surprised to hear

that they were going to have to blow up their cars,

their tanks, anything that they'd traveled in

to get there.

The vast majority

of the equipment that the British Army

had taken to France with them was lost.

All their heavy artillery, virtually all their vehicles,

all those had to be abandoned in France

because they couldn't get them back

across the Channel.

- They were told to put sand into the tanks

so that the engine would completely seize up.

Because they didn't want the Germans

to have any of their equipment.

But as every soldier has drummed into him,

they didn't leave their rifles behind.

- You could've been charged if you lose your rifle.

That was more valuable to them than your life.

- My 1500 weight van went into the canal

with my kit bag, camera, with some films

that would be worth a fortune now.

We smashed up all the lorries,

I mean we couldn't take 'em to England.

We took our machine guns out the lorry.

Drove the lorries over the machine guns

'til they were destroyed.

Then cut all the pipes on the lorries

and left them running but they'd seize up.

There was a big hotel on the seafront.

We went down into the cellar.

We dived in, ya know, and we saw other people in there.

And this woman she said, don't bother.

She said, come in, and there was beds there

and we laid there for a while

and it was all right but we couldn't go

to the toilet or anything.

We had a machine gun on the toilet

where they were firing, keeping the enemy away.

But it didn't seem to make any difference.

You couldn't do anything with money.

There was money lying in the street, useless.

- After we got to the beach, the lieutenant said to me,

you're air force and these are all army,

and if they get hold of you, you'll get beaten up.

Because they could see no support from the air.

He said but what you'll have to do,

take your shoes off and put some boots on,

a mackintosh, and a tin hat.

So I was completely disguised as an army chaplain.

As tens of thousands of soldiers

congregated on the sands at Dunkirk,

they were confronted with scenes of destruction

they would never forget.

It was all on fire down the beach.

- We got attacked by the bombers

and the Sukers were comin' down

and divebombing on the beach.

People don't realize but my God,

you saw all your mates bein' blown to pieces,

ships bein' blown apart.

You had big cannons going off.

We just had to lie in the sand.

It was all rather nasty.

Forces and bombers kept comin' over

machine gunnin' the beach.

No protection at all.

And you just sat on the beach, nowhere to go,

so you just sat there and hoped that they'd miss you.

We used to make a duvat, we would dig up the sand,

put a tin roof on it, and make a hole

and say you get caught in.

The part of the beach that I was on

there was no officers at all.

We just had to look after ourselves.

- There's bodies lying all over the place.

We had to bury a lot and where we buried them

they put bottles and I didn't know

'til, well, recently, they put the bottles there

to know where they were buried

so that they could take them up again.

Morale plummeted to a previously unknown level

as the soldiers waited without supplies or hope.

And for about four days, I hadn't got any food,

no water, nothing.

48 hours on the beach.

No food, no water, nothing.

And we couldn't drink the water,

we couldn't drink nothing, oh it was terrible.

There were people goin' out their minds.

- Some just, I suppose, just gave up.

I don't know.

The feeling of despair

was in your mind all the time.

You didn't know what was gonna happen.

You were just numb.

You couldn't think ahead.

And we did, ya know, wonder what was gonna happen.

As they waited under a hail

of bombs and machine gun fire,

the defenseless soldiers felt abandoned

by the Royal Air Force.

There was a general sense amongst the army

on the beach that they had been abandoned by the RAF.

The Royal Air Force

and Fighting Command were being vilified

by the soldiers and sailors who felt the RAF

weren't defending them at Dunkirk.

Every time they looked up in the sky

they only saw Germans.

Where were the RAF?

- We had one RAF Spitfire come across the beach

and everybody cheered, a British plane.

And this British plane came down

and machine gunned us.

It was a Spitfire that had been captured

by the Germans and the Germans were using it.

- Airmen who had been downed or who were working

on the ground, who were trying to get back

on board ships to go back to Britain,

they were basically turned away

or they were attacked by people saying,

you're not getting on board,

you haven't helped us, off you go.

That's how much they were vilified.

- I thought that was a bit uncalled for.

- We'd heard when we came back to England

how the RAF were protecting the troops on the beach.

Well not on our beach.

Weakened by losses during the French campaign,

the RAF couldn't stop the German air assault

but they could hamper it.

The soldiers and the sailors

simply believed that the RAF weren't there.

The fact is, it was really unfair,

because the RAF were there.

- The air battles over Dunkirk

were actually quite intense.

They were there, they just weren't

directly over the beach.

A Spitfire overflying the beach

is going at well over 300 miles an hour

and is gonna be over the beach

for a fraction of a second, a couple of seconds at most.

The air to air combat that took place

to try and stop the Germans from getting

to the beach was seven miles inland,

so it would've been out of the line

of sight of the guys on the beach anyway.

They were there.

Perhaps not over the beaches

but bit farther inland or out to seas.

- You had this sort of a standoff

and of course at the time of the Battle of Britain,

the entire attitude to the RAF changed

and they became the nation's heroes.

As Germans divisions pressed in

on the perimeter of Dunkirk,

the BEF were on the verge of annihilation.

Their fate balanced on a knife edge.

I'll tell ya something.

When we were under all that fire on the beach,

I don't think there were any atheists.

I never stopped praying.

- A lot of 'em mighta changed their minds

when they got off but we used to had a saying,

we used to dig these small trenches

which we called slit trenches

and we used to say there were no atheists

in a slit trench, ya know what I mean,

when all this nasty stuff was comin' up.

So that's just my personal opinion.

- It was wonderful to see so many men praying.

They've probably not prayed since but I did a lot.

- We were in the cellar for a week

and they brought out baskets with the rosaries in

and we all had to have a rosary

and we all stood there and prayed.

My mother is very courageous.

She said if we get through Dunkirk,

we'll get through anything, and she was right.

On the 27th of May, 1940

senior naval officer Captain William Tennant

arrived at Dunkirk to coordinate the evacuation.

- Tennant realized, okay we don't have the port,

but what we do have is this long breakwater,

this long arm, called the mole.

It was never intended for a ship

to come along side, never at all,

it was just to stop the sand running

into the harbor and silting it up.

He immediately saw the prospect

of tying ships up along side this mole

and using it as a keyside from which troops

could then embark onto the vessels.

- What he did was to bring one ship

along side the mole to see will this work.

And it did.

An armada of ships, crewed

by the Royal Navy and civilian volunteers

sailed through the treacherous waters of the channel.

Many would face scenes they had never witnessed before.

And the majority

of the little ships that came over

were actually commandeered boats

that were taken across by members of the Royal Navy

and these members of the Royal Navy very often

didn't even know how the boats worked.

The purpose of the little ships

was to take people from the beaches

onto the bigger ships offshore.

So they might do this time and time and time again.

- We stood on that mole, oh we waited ages

to get a ship.

They were shooting at us, oh my God.

We kept wavin' to ships, askin' them to stop for us.

A lot of them passed.

Mummy had her nightie, she just kept wavin',

stopping the... I'm British.

The sailors came under merciless attack

by the Luftwaffe.

Ships were being destroyed

left, right, and center, so it was hell

that you were going into.

A third of the ships

that took part were destroyed or put out of action,

so it was a hugely dangerous undertaking.

- The dangers were many.

For a start, you had to know where the minefields were.

They were minefields that had been laid

by Admiral Ramsey but they were enormous.

You could be run over by a boat that couldn't see you.

Or you could find that your sea was afire

because when any of these large boats go down,

the engines explode and the diesel ends up

all over the surface.

You could easily be shot.

A lot of the people on the boats

that came back dead had been shot

by German aircraft or they were being bombed out the water.

A lot of people didn't survive the crossing.

As the first boats started coming in,

they lifted the boom up and watched a boat come in,

half of whom were dead.

As the battle raged in land,

across the sky, and into the sea,

all hands worked to the absolute limits

of their endurance.

- Well I was in full uniform.

I just waded out up to me neck in water,

'cause I saw this ship, and it was a paddle steamer.

I got hold of a rope, was pulled on board,

and that was the last thing I remember.

I just passed out completely.

When I come to, they'd carried me downstairs

where the boilers were, in me uniform soaking wet,

dryin' out per the boilers.

- We saw a coaster and it was on its side

and it appeared to be on fire,

there was all this smoke coming from it,

but we saw some people gettin' on it

and so we went and explored.

They were burnin' oily rags to make out

it was on fire so we got on the boat

and this boat must have been used for taking coal.

It was all coal dust.

Every time a shell or bomb burst,

all this coal dust came out

and dare I say we was lookin' like

the black and white minstrels.

- Everybody was tryin' to get out somehow.

And then the little ships came over,

picked up a lot of people.

Come on, you blokes, next stop Dover.

We were absolutely thrilled.

I knew we then prayed and prayed and prayed

to get back to Dover.

- We got to the mole and eventually we got

to a fishin' trawler called The Lord Gray.

And he counted us on and he said,

that's enough now, off ya go.

So laid down and went to sleep straight away.

- My mother had the sense, she said

we're not going for the big ships

because they were bombing them like Dilia.

So we got this little oil tanker called The Sutton.

We had the captain's cabin and we were told

we could be bombed any minute, it was so dangerous,

to get through all this debris and everything.

We had to go through fire to get out.

The bombs were comin' down and the machine guns

were bein' fired at us all through.

Some got sank, some got away with it.

- Bombin', bombin', bombin', bombin'.

You cannot believe hell, least you can be,

if you're in it.

And with all the baloney in what people are sayin'

about not bein' scared, you can't help bein' scared.

And you would then prayed and prayed and prayed

to get back to Dover.

What happened?

We got back to Dover.

It was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, Shangri-La.

Daylight, we were shattered, absolutely shattered,

but what a feeling it was to know we were back in England.

It gets you to a feelin'.

I can only say it was a miracle

and we're just happy to be alive.

- Our company was 107 strong

and there was just 31 of us got back, over 107.

The British Army who had left

the shores of France in the depths of despair

were welcomed home as conquering heroes.

We'd just lost a battle but these people

in England were treatin' us like heroes.

- The thing that I could still say to this day,

doesn't sound very much, I know,

but it was amazing, as we came into Harwich,

there were hundreds of women on the docks

and they'd all obviously been told

as soon as the ships start coming off,

grab a soldier and look after 'im.

- Standin' on the queues you have all these lovely ladies

and they all wanted to get hold of the wounded hero, me.

And I was in more trouble from these ladies

from the WES than any bloody German.

They were all tryin' to grab me.

The medical officer said you'll still warm, you'll do.

- Some lady got ahold of my arm,

took me into a hangar, gave me some tea

and sandwiches, my co-driver, he survived,

and he was tellin' everybody that I saved his life.

Well I didn't really.

I was drivin' the lorry, he was in the back drunk

and I got him to the beach

and got him out before we destroyed the lorry.

So in a way I suppose you could say

I saved him but not really.

When we finally reassembled I was surprised

at how many of my battalion had managed to get back.

It was a miracle we got out.

The people were very good when we got to England.

They helped us out, gave us clothes,

we had nothing, we had to be stripped,

and bathed, and fumigated, and God knows what.

- Dunkirk to me was an epic of absolute bravery.

I went through hell to get out of hell.

I got back safe and sound.

That's how I feel.

Operation Dynamo

was the biggest military evacuation in history.

The campaign narrowly avoided a surrender to Hitler

and was a major turning point of WWII.

But, to the soldiers who returned in 1940,

it represented failure.

- The British soldiers who were evacuated back

saw themselves as a sort of battered remnant

of a defeated army.

They'd been part of a terrible defeat.

They came home ashamed.

- These were heroes because they'd survived

and it meant that we had a future in Britain.

What Dunkirk did was it enabled the British

to stay in the war.

It was a triumph in that they managed

to get away far, far more people

than they thought they would.

- It was amazing how many they saved.

- They were only expected to achieve

a maximum of 45,000 troops.

They managed, in the end, to reach out

and save over 338,000 men.

The British Army had survived.

A mood of national euphoria

captured the British public.

The smoke of battle

hangs over Dunkirk, that port just

across the Channel from which thousands

of men of the BEF are coming home.

The magnificent rear guard action

carried out by the British and French armies

in the north is only equaled by the splendid work

of the navy in covering their embarkation

and bringing them home.

The soldiers return aboard warships

and vessels of all kinds.

They've been fighting unceasingly for two weeks

and the whole world has marveled

at their tremendous courage and unshaken discipline

under brilliant leadership.

And never in the whole history

of her defeats and her victories

has Britain been prouder of her fighting sons.

Are you glad to be back boys?

- Sure, yeah.

It would be a long road

to eventual victory.

World War II would continue for another five years.

But the events at Dunkirk made the next step

in that journey possible.

A lot of guys went off on leave

for a few days just to recover.

We were all given three days.

- Station warrant officer came in

and he said, I'm afraid chaps reveille here is at 6:00

but seeing that you were at Dunkirk,

you can get up at half past seven or 8:00

and have a breakfast and that's that.

Hip hip!

Hooray!

The men of the BEF

have been enjoying some respite from danger

after their heroic withdrawal from Flanders.

Here in a rest camp they dust themselves down,

sort themselves out, and indulge in a little music.

♪ Came to the battle

- My pal and I, we were together all through the war.

We both survived Dunkirk.

But when we went out to the boat,

we sort of somehow went in different direction

and I assumed that he'd got either killed

or taken prisoner.

And he thought the same about me.

And next morning, when I was walking

up the street to get a breakfast,

and walkin' down in the opposite direction

was my pal Ginger.

And he suddenly spotted me and come

and put his arms around me, we was like

long lost lovers.

And we both thought the other had perished.

I mean the escapes I had was absolutely amazing.

Ginger and I were in the cinema

and I can't remember what the film was called,

but we were in there and got hit by a bomb

and there was over 500 people killed in it

and him and I walked out just covered in dust.

Operation Dynamo has been the subject

of multiple films.

The 2017 release of Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk

focused the world's attention once again

on the events that changed the course of World War II.

- I just think it's one of the great stories

in human history.

I am very excited to have some

of the veterans who were actually there

participating in the events.

We screened the film for them

and it was one of the most daunting things

I've faced as a filmmaker, to stand

in front of those people who were really there,

who are now well into their 90s,

and show them our version of their story.

- We went to the first showing of Dunkirk.

I went on the red carpet up there at Leicester Square

and they was coming along givin' out cuddles on me.

- There were hundreds of people

behind the barriers.

Walked up and they were cheering and waving.

It was outstanding.

- It was a good film.

The only people realize what the Dunkirk spirit was

was people who were there.

No one else can imagine what it was like.

- I thought it was very good.

There was a couple of little minor things

that I could've faulted but in general

it was pretty accurate.

- I sat on my backside watchin' the baloney.

- I thought it's gonna be a load

of American rubbish and I was quite pleasantly surprised.

I thought it was pretty accurate.

- It wasn't my war.

How can you make what we went through?

You cannot do it.

- Prince Harry invited me to the palace.

What a marvelous man that he is

but I was only the second oldest man there.

That was a shame.

- They treated us like heroes.

- You are heroes.

You were and you still are.

Definitely, I hope someone gave you a lift

up the hill though.

- This lady, she pushed me for a little while,

then someone came up from the palace

and he said to me, do you know who that was?

I said no.

He said that was Kate.

Well I didn't know it was 'cause she

was at the back of me.

- He was so charming, Prince Harry.

He came 'round and chatted to us all.

And he was very, very nice.

- I couldn't get me shoes on 'cause my feet swell

and I had to go in my slippers,

so I said to Prince Harry, I apologize

for havin' my slippers on, he said

at least they're royal blue.

- Prince Harry thanked us very much indeed.

I would say we were heroes.

And I thank God that I was, that's all good.